On Tuesday 25 October 2005 20:55, Matthew Raymond wrote:
> The term "read-only" is not a synonym for "user-alterable". It has
> UI and form submission implications that are unrelated to one's
> ability to edit element contents. While the styling of user-alterable
> elements has merit, tying user-alterability to and element's
> read-only property does not. If we are to have selectors for
> user-alterability specifically, we need to separate them from the
> concept of read-only.
The question is on the agenda of the CSS WG, but it may take a while
before we get to it. My estimate is that we won't start discussing it
until CSS 2.1 is a CR again.
That said, I think that a distinction between ':read-write' and
':editable' (hypothetical name) is indeed useful.
In an editor, you can have a form control that is both ':read-only' and
':editable', or vice versa: ':read-write' and not ':editable'. The
latter may happen if the document you are editing is a template with
some parts that cannot be edited.
So I think it is reasonable to only apply ':read-write' to form controls
of which the user can change the value.
On the other hand, I'm not sure we should actually introduce
':editable'. It would only apply to WYSIWYG editors and those will
ignore it, because (1) if they are truly WYSIWYG, they will approximate
a browser's rendering instead and (2) their UI is (hopefully)
independent of the document being edited.
Bert
--
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